


Plot Twist

by madnessandbrilliance, the-noble-idiot (1004_Angel)



Series: Lance and Keith's Guide to Literary Devices [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bisexual Lance, College AU, First Kiss, First Meetings, Gay Keith, Lance is an oblivious walnut we love him, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Roommates, Slow Burn, based on that story, getting it out there before season 6, roommate au, turns out he's gay for his roommate, where the guy thought he was being homophobic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 15:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14897096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessandbrilliance/pseuds/madnessandbrilliance, https://archiveofourown.org/users/1004_Angel/pseuds/the-noble-idiot
Summary: Plot twist, n. a literary technique that introduces a radical change in the direction or expected outcome.The problem starts because of this: Keith brings guys home sometimes. At first Lance thought he was okay with it, since it’s not really his business who Keith sleeps with. He’s usually discreet enough about it that Lance won’t see/hear anything he wouldn’t want to see/hear from anyone else. But for some reason, Lance has started feeling weird if he even sees him with other guys.Plot twist: Turns out, Lance didn’t have a problem with Keith kissing guys as long as it was Lance he was kissing.





	Plot Twist

**Author's Note:**

> Phew, hey guys! This has been a few months in the making, since we came across that story from Reddit where a guy thought he was being homophobic towards his roommate when it turns out that he just wanted said roommate for himself. Madness and I have been co-writing this for a while and we wanted to publish it before season six. We're excited to share it with you! So enjoy! -Noble
> 
> It's finished! This fic was so much fun to write and we really hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it. It’s our first time cowriting (and my first Voltron fic) so please comment and let us know what you think! — Madness

**It starts like this:**

Lance walks in one day to Keith making out with a guy on their couch.

See, normally, Lance doesn’t have a problem with this.He’s never considered himself homophobic, discriminatory, or anything of the sort. He grew up in a pretty open minded household; his older sister is a lesbian, and brings her girlfriend over for dinner all the time. He helped his brother’s friend in high school ask another guy to prom. He’s _never_ felt any sort of discomfort around gay people before this. But the boiling in Lance’s stomach at the sight of Keith’s tongue down this other guy’s throat makes him feel like he’s going to throw up, _and he doesn’t know why._

Lance and Keith’s story goes back about a year, when Lance moved into Keith’s apartment. The end of their sophomore year of college, Lance, at Hunk’s recommendation, had decided to move off campus . It was cheaper than living in the dorms, and gave him a lot more freedom. Hunk himself would be moving into a small studio apartment with their mutual friend, Pidge, justifying it with something to do with their engineering project that truthfully Lance didn’t really understand but agreed was reasonable. Lance hadn’t wanted to get paired into a tiny college dorm with a complete stranger, so he’d gone searching for affordable places nearby, and when he spotted Keith’s ad for a roommate on Craigslist, he had jumped at the chance. The small affordable apartment was a short bike ride from their college campus and a reasonable distance from the bar Lance works at part time. Ideal, really.

The initial email conversation between the two had gone over well, and when Keith had mentioned, in passing and with a careful sort of wariness, an ex-boyfriend, Lance had taken it completely in stride. Neither of them made a big deal about the admission or the newfound understanding of Keith’s sexuality, and soon they’d established a move in date.

_August_ **.**

Lance remembers the first time he met Keith face-to-face, hauling his luggage up the stairs to the second floor apartment only to come face to face with a beautiful human specimen. Don’t get him wrong, Lance is straight as balls, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a beautiful person. Long-ish dark hair in a choppy haircut Lance could only describe as a mullet _(seriously?)_ , eyes that look like a dark shade of purple under the shitty light of the stairwell, long and toned body that Lance would give anything to have. It was almost unfair how effortlessly good-looking this guy was, questionable haircut and all. 

His appraisal was interrupted by the man himself, and Lance’s eyes snapped up to meet his. 

“Hey. You’re Lance, right?” The guy’s voice was low but nice-- nothing like the voice of someone who would have a mullet. Lance was expecting something scratchier, rougher. This was a nicer alternative.

“Yeah. So I guess you’re Keith?”

Keith nodded with a short bob of his head, and held out his hand to take one of Lance’s bags. “Lemme help you out.”

“Thanks man,” Lance said, passing over his cosmetics bag with a grunt. Keith eyed the contents through the clear plastic with slightly raised eyebrows but didn’t comment. They lugged his things through the nondescript door of apartment 238, where Lance tried not to be obvious in his curious gazes around his new home.

“I’ll give you the grand tour,” Keith said, Lance’s suitcases now resting in the apartment foyer. Lance breathed heavily through his nose, trying and failing to look like he wasn’t short of breath. Keith wasn’t as stupid as he looked though, and side-eyed Lance with a smirk. “Tired?”

“Not on your life, mullet,” Lance responded automatically.

Keith frowned a little, one hand reaching up to pat the hair at the back of his neck. “It’s not a mullet?” He said, though he phrased it like a question.

“Totally a mullet, dude.”

“It just grows that way.”

“Say whatever you gotta say to make yourself feel better.”

Keith sputtered, but let it go, mouth twisted in a way that could either be a frown or a held-back smile. _Hah_. Lance: 1; Keith: 0. Lance mentally patted himself on the back, ignoring the voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Pidge’s that said “stop getting competitive Lance. You just met the guy.” Yeah, yeah, mental-voice Pidge. Something about his new roommate’s cool facade made him feel like challenging the guy in order to elicit some kind of human emotion besides indifference.

The guy in question has already moved on, leaving Lance scrambling to keep up. Keith waved a hand towards the room facing them. “Living room. Cable service depends on the weather. Kitchen’s over there…”

Keith turned out to be a man of few words, speaking only to describe the apartment floor plan and detail neighborhood rules.

“Basically, parties need a week’s advance, the dog next door won’t shut up, and the upstairs neighbor is a dick.”

“What’d he do to deserve that nickname?” Lance teased, expecting a generic answer like “Rolls bowling balls across the bedroom floor at three am to piss me off” or some such nuisance, but Keith’s expression turned dark, and he rubbed his thumb and forefingers together in a gesture that Lance would eventually come to associate with Keith’s discomfort.

“He just is.”

And that was that. Lance raised a brow, wondering if he should add something else to keep the conversation going-- they would be living together after all, might as well get to know each other-- but before he could Keith turned away and went in the kitchen to rifle through the fridge without another word. Lance smothered the bout of annoyance at the slight, sighing instead and grabbing his bags to take to his room.

The weeks that followed were rocky as the boys learned to get along with one another. The first few days were uneventful as Lance moved himself in; the two skirted around each other, trying not to get in each other’s way. Initially, Lance tried to avoid confrontation and be a good roommate, but admittedly after a while he began to fall off the wagon as he became more comfortable in his new home.

See, Lance could admit his faults: he’s shit at washing dishes, he took up a lot of the bathroom counter space with his skincare products, and sometimes he’d fall asleep with his music playing through his speaker. Even though _he_ was able to sleep through an avalanche, Keith was a light sleeper and could not. _But,_ it wasn’t all on him. Keith had a nasty habit of leaving his hair in the shower drain and had a frankly abysmal skincare routine. Not to mention he didn’t talk, like… _ever,_ which made for iffy communication between them about arising issues

One of their first confrontations went something like this: around the second week of their new living arrangement, Lance was woken up at two in the morning by a sharp knock on his bedroom door. 

He stumbled out of bed and wiped the sleep from his eyes, careful not to disturb his face mask, as he opened it, squinting at an exasperated looking Keith wearing a pair of boxers and a black t-shirt. “Dude,” Keith said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is the fourth time this week you fell asleep with your music on. Could you turn it down?”

“Oh, sorry, man,” Lance grunted in a sleep-hoarse voice. “I didn’t even realize.”

“I can tell,” Keith said dryly, and Lance wrinkled his nose. “You haven’t had a roommate before, have you.” It wasn’t a question and sounded a bit judgmental, a tone that immediately claimed Lance’s attention. 

“Hey, yeah, I have, I just haven’t had my own room for a while. I didn’t realize the sound would go through the walls. Besides,” He huffed, rising up to the challenging look in Keith’s eyes. “You’re not much better. How many times in the last two weeks have I had to clean out the shower drain cause you couldn’t clean your hair out of there?”

Keith bristled. “I wake up at six am, I think you cutting into my sleep is a little more important than taking a couple extra seconds to clean out the shower!”

“It’s gross dude, I’m just saying!”

Keith growled. “Whatever. I’m tired. Just turn your music down, alright?” He turned around and started to head back to his room, and Lance, in a sleepy fit of immaturity, threw back at him, “And it’s not like anyone _asks_ you to wake up at six in the morning!”

They stayed awake another hour arguing about sleeping habits. 

So, yeah. They clashed at first. Lance was chatty. Keith, he soon realized, wasn’t, and it took them a while to adjust to a method of communication that suited them both. But eventually Lance figured out he can shut off his music before accidentally falling asleep by making a queue of songs, and Keith started cleaning out the shower more frequently. Lance discovered Keith can’t cook to save his life, and Lance was also a damn good cook if he said so himself, so he took over the meal cooking while Keith cleaned up afterward. Honestly, Lance had no idea how on earth Keith had managed to survive on his own until this point.

Eventually they fell into an appropriate sort of rhythm, though Lance couldn’t say for certain whether or not they were “friends” just yet. Lance is a social sort, though, and it wasn’t long before he was prodding Keith to spend “quality roommate time” together. Keith didn’t respond to his small talk, so instead Lance did what Lance does best: he provoked.

_September_. 

Keith was listening to music through his earphones, bobbing his head along while flipping through a physics textbook, not noticing as Lance passed by on his way to the kitchen and, in a surge of curiosity, approached. He did notice, however, when Lance unceremoniously tugged an earphone out of his ear, ignoring Keith’s shout of “Hey!” to listen surreptitiously at the sound emitting from the tiny earbud.

“Nickelback? Are you kidding me?” Lance couldn’t tell if he was surprised by Keith’s abysmal taste in music, or validated in that someone with no apparent physical flaws was apparently tone deaf-- though when he paused to think about it, Keith _did_ have a suspiciously retro haircut and wore fingerless gloves, so in retrospect it wasn’t all that surprising. 

Keith snatched back his earphone and gave Lance a scathing look. “No one _asked_ you to grab my earphones from my freakin’ ear, Lance. What the hell?”

“I wanted to see what music was better than listening to than my _beautiful_ voice, since we basically haven’t talked at all since I moved in, but now it’s obvious that you’re incapable of appreciating a nice sound when you hear it. I mean, c’m _on_ , man. Nickelback?” Lance put just the right amount of haughtiness and sass into his tone, but Keith didn’t seem to be very impressed.

His jaw worked for a moment, and Lance could see that he was fighting with himself, doing his damndest not to take the bait. So Lance raised a challenging eyebrow and scoffed, “Shouldn’t’ve expected much more from a guy who has a _mullet_.”

“It’s not a mullet!” Keith snapped, slamming his textbook shut, and Lance felt a triumphant thrill. _Success._ When in doubt, go for the mullet. “Who asked you for your opinion anyways? I bet you listen to something stupid, like Backstreet Boys, or whatever.”

“First of all, ‘I Want It That Way’ is the gem of our generation, and second of all, if I’m going to be living with you for like, two more years, then I have to make sure we can at least agree on some form of music. What’s your favorite Rihanna song?”

Keith narrowed his eyes, crossing his arms and shaking his head almost disbelievingly. “I have no idea, Lance. What kind of music does Rihanna even play?”

Lance threw his hands in the air dramatically. “Oh come on, were you born fifty years ago? Umbrella? Please Don’t Stop the Music? Rude Boy?” At the last one, he dropped his shoulders and wriggled his eyebrows, shimmying towards Keith as he hummed the intro to the song that dominated a good chunk of his adolescence. _“Come here rude boy-boy, can you get it up…”_

Keith shoved him back, but there was a spark of amusement in his violet eyes that Lance didn’t miss. Lance let himself fall onto the couch with a small huff as Keith shrugged slightly. “Okay, that sounds kind of familiar. I think I’ve heard that before.”

“Okay, so _maybe_ you’re not an uncultured swine.” Lance switched gears and began again. _“When the sun shines, we’ll shine together, told you I’ll be here forever…”_

Keith shook his head. “Nope.”

“I take it back, oh my God, this is a travesty. Keith, please tell me you don’t listen to Linkin Park.”

Keith didn’t say anything for a moment, and Lance groaned, throwing his head back onto the couch. “Noooooo,” Lance lamented into his hands. “Keith. What the hell. You’re like a walking Hot Topic ad.”

“And you’re a frat boy who shops exclusively at PacSun,” Keith retorted, and Lance let out a snort.

“You’re not denying it, though.”

“Neither are you.”

Lance dropped his hands and fixed Keith with a sharp look. This was probably the most they’ve talked since he moved in, and Lance was feeling pretty good about himself right now, especially when he saw Keith smirking back at him. He wanted to keep this banter going. “Alright, Keith, this is the make or break question. Instant death.”

Keith raised a brow at his serious expression. “I have a feeling it’s not as serious as you’re making it out to be.”

Lance ignored him. “It’s something I should’ve asked you when I first talked to you about moving into this place. It’s the backbone of my entire being. Your statement on this could dictate what kind of relationship we have for the rest of our time as roommates.”

“Are you always this dramatic?”

“Keith!” Lance slammed his fist down on the couch cushion between them, which had zero effect due to the muffled sound. But Keith’s mouth twitched, so Lance counted it as a success. “What… is your opinion on Beyoncé?”

Lance got a blank look in return. “Who’s Beyoncé?”

Lance stared. Keith gazed back, completely straight faced, not showing a hint or signthat he was aware of Lance’s brain short circuiting. 

“You... “ Lance choked out, then his mouth snapped shut and he shut his eyes, shaking his head sharply before standing and stumbling towards his room. He made it to the door before he heard a low snicker, and he spun around in time to see Keith break into a blinding grin. 

Lance let out a shriek. “You _asshole_!”

It seemed the indignant expression on his face and the crack in his voice was too much for Keith, because he burst into laughter, shoulders shaking as he collapsed back onto the couch.

“Consider it payback for interrupting me while I was studying,” Keith huffed out between laughs. “I don’t live under a _rock_ , Lance.”

“I was about to pack up my stuff and _leave_! You can’t joke like that!” Despite his words, Lance was grinning, not above admitting that Keith was pretty convincing. He made his way back to the couch and plopped down next to the other man. “And don’t think this gets you off the hook! You still have awful music taste.”

Keith rolled his eyes, arms stretched out across the back of the couch and a smirk on his face. He looked more relaxed than Lance had seen him before. “We’re just gonna have to agree to disagree there, Lance.” 

But Lance didn’t want the conversation to end. They were talking, finally, and he was making Keith laugh, which was more than he’d been able to do over the last few weeks he was here, even after their arguments had eased off. So he shook his head, “Nope,” and pulled out his phone, setting it on the table. “There’s gotta be something you listen to that doesn’t completely suck. C’mon, get your phone.”

“What are you doing?” Keith asked, wariness creeping into his tone as he tugged his phone out. Lance didn’t want that, so he held up a finger and played the first song that popped into his head. Music started playing out of his phone’s tiny speakers. 

“I’ll go first. I’ve been bopping to this song since it came out a couple months ago.” He hummed along to the words under his breath. “ _Talking in my sleep at night, makin’ myself crazy…_ ”

Keith listened for a moment then shook his head. “Nope. Don’t know it.”

Lance sighed in faux disappointment. “I’m so sorry, Dua… Okay, your turn.”

Keith began scrolling through his phone, then hesitated, narrowing his eyes at Lance. “This is just an excuse to make fun of my music, isn’t it?”

Lance raised a challenging brow. “Why, are you _scared_?”

And that did it. Keith gritted his teeth and selected a song. Lance listened to a few bars, then sighed yet again. “I can’t even be mad, Paramore is actually amazing.”

Keith’s laugh made the admission worth it. 

They sat like that for an hour, shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns playing songs, Keith’s physics textbook forgotten. Lance was still convinced that Keith’s music taste was a little too… _punk-rock_ in his opinion, and despite his admission about not living under a rock, Keith only knew like _three_ of Beyoncé’s songs (which immediately thrust Lance into a Lemonade-playing spree), but they did manage to agree on a few artists. Carly Rae Jepsen and Green Day made an appearance on both their lists, as did Panic! at the Disco.

Eventually the two of them settled into a comfortable silence as the playlist radio sang softly from Keith’s phone on the coffee table. Keith was back to reading his textbook while Lance added some Spanish music to the queue and sang along quietly, occasionally speaking up to tell Keith about a funny story involving his family and whichever song would be playing at that time. Keith’s “Recommended For You” playlist was probably screwed at this point, something that Lance took great pride in.

Keith cut short their impromptu hang out session by standing to head to work, but his smile and “See ya later, Lance,” was warmer and less stilted than previous goodbyes. Lance went to his afternoon class with a newfound spring in his step, and from then on, Keith was friendlier, quicker to tease. Lance met the newfound energy eagerly. 

With this newly established rapport around the small apartment, Lance and Keith’s personalities bloomed even more. Keith was still rather mysterious, but Lance chatted constantly about his family and friends. He managed to draw from Keith that he had a brother (foster brother, technically, but Keith made it clear that they were brothers in all but blood). Despite that, he had to admit he still didn’t know _too_ much about the guy he was living with. 

_Mid-October._

Lance had opened the door to a tall, muscular Asian dude with a streak of white hair and a scar across his nose. “Hi,” the man said pleasantly. “Is Keith home?” 

Lance leaned against the door frame, shaking his head apologetically. “Sorry, no, he’s at work.”

“Ah, so you must be Lance!” The man broke into an even wider grin, holding out his left hand, which Lance shook after a second to orient himself. A glance down showed him that his right hand was a prosthetic, and Lance’s eyes snapped back up quickly so as to not be rude. “I’ve heard a lot about you! I’m Shiro, Keith’s brother.”

Lance perked right up at that. “Hey! What’s up, man, d’you wanna come in?” He stepped aside to let Shiro into the apartment, but the other man shook his head almost immediately.

“Nah, it’s alright. I wanted to drop by to surprise Keith for his birthday, but if he’s not here I’ll just pick him up from work and take him to dinner.”

Lance shrugged and nodded. “Okay, well--” Shiro’s words finished processing in his brain and he spluttered to a stop. “Wait, Keith’s _birthday_?”

Shiro’s eyebrows quirked in apparent surprise. “Yeah, it’s on Monday. I’m going to be on a business trip, so I wanted to treat him to dinner a bit early. He’s awful at feeding himself, as you probably already figured out.”

Lance nodded, murmuring in assent, but he was still hung up on Shiro’s statement about it being _Keith’s birthday_ soon. Shiro seemed to notice his distraction. “You didn’t know. He didn’t tell you?”

“Not a word…”

Shiro chuckled, running his hand through his hair and nodding absently. “Yeah, that does sound like Keith. He always forgets his own birthday, so I’m always reminding him.”

The initial shock passed, and Lance could practically feel the inspiration hitting him like a bolt of lightning. “I got this,” he said, and in a burst of confidence patted Shiro on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of Keith’s birthday this year!”

\--Is what he said, but two hours later, Lance was sitting on his laptop in the dark, scrolling through his Google search of“what to buy your emo roommate for his birthday” and coming up empty. The results comprised of eighty percent emo memes, fifteen percent song lyric quote blocks, and five percent emo selfies from 2007, none of which screamed _Keith._ _God,_ why are some people so hard to shop for?

Lance scrolled aimlessly, sipping idly on some orange juice and hoping _something_ just... 

Lance sat bolt upright, clicking the image and enlarging it. This. This was it. It was emo, but not _too emo_ that Keith would notice it was emo (how many times can Lance use emo in a sentence before he wants to throw himself out the window? Vote now on your phones). He clicked into the Amazon page, breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t too expensive, and added it to his cart.

In a stroke of luck, the package was delivered four days later, right on schedule. Both Keith and Lance were home when the UPS guy rang the doorbell. Keith moved to get up from his spot on the sofa but Lance was faster, already anticipating the package’s arrival. “Stay right there, Keithy-boy,” he sing-songed, ignoring Keith’s perplexed echo of “Keithy-boy??” to instead open the door and sign for his package.

He immediately strolled back and plopped it on the coffee table in front of Keith’s knees, standing with his hands on his hips triumphantly. “Open it.”

Keith stared up at him, brows furrowed slightly underneath his bangs. “Why do you want me to open your mail?”

“Because it’s not for me, _ya dingus,”_ Lance laughed, settling into the beanbag chair comfortably. “It’s for you.”

Keith only looked more confused. “But I didn’t order anything?”

“No, because I did.”

“It’s not a bomb, is it?”

Lance clutched at the fabric of his shirt, just above his heart, mock offended. “Keith! After three months of living together, you think I want to kill you for your inheritance and the exclusive rights to this shabby apartment?”

“Absolutely.”

“You wound me, man.”

Keith fought back an obvious smile. “Why would you buy me something?”

Lance leaned forward with wink. “Because a little birdy named Shiro came by to drop off your _birthday present._ ”

Tick. Tick. Tick. _DING._

Keith’s eyes widened as far as they could go. “What day is it?”

“October 23rd, dude.”

Keith’s gaze slowly migrated back to the package in front of him. “Oh yeah.” He reached out, almost hesitant, before withdrawing. “I can’t accept this.” His mouth was twisted down slightly, eyes conflicted, and Lance’s tilted his head in confusion.

“Why not?”

“Cause, wow, big deal. Congratulations, you survived another year.”

Lance’s expression fell a little. “You don’t want it?”

Keith didn’t answer.

Lance ran a hand through his hair, frowning. “Look, I’m not gonna force you to accept a present you don’t want. But if you’re saying no to it cause of some weird, nihilistic reason, I’m gonna fight you on this.” Keith bit down on his bottom lip and Lance sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he fixed Keith with an intense gaze. “It’s okay to be alive, Keith,” he continued. “It’s okay to celebrate living. I think that’s what makes us human, y’know? That no matter what happened to us over the past year, we still made it, and if we can do that, we can survive the next year too. And the one after that.” Lance cocked his head, smiling. “Don’t you think that’s worth celebrating?”

Keith had looked at him during his little speech, the corners of his mouth twitching up into a small grin. A beat, and then, “I mean, yeah, if you put it that way…”

Lance grinned wider and leaned back. “So open your present, Mullet-for-brains, and celebrate being alive.”

Keith’s smile grew, then he ripped into the package, withdrawing a red cropped jacket with white piping and a tall collar that stood straight up without slumping. The sleeves extended far past the waist of the jacket, swallowing Keith’s wrists when he tried it on. Lance let out a low whistle. God damn, he’s a genius. The red clashed beautifully with Keith’s usual black T-shirt, his dark hair half-obscured by the collar that framed his jaw and neck. It looked nice on the model but this jacket was _made_ for Keith.

“How does it look?”

Lance smirked. “Normally I’d never call a crop jacket sexy, but _Keith, my buddy, my dude,_ you can pull that shit off.”

The red that colored Keith’s face was the same as his jacket, and Lance laughed at his expression until tears were sliding down his cheeks. He shoved Lance lightly, but he didn’t take the jacket off, so Lance counted it as a success. Hunk and Pidge came by later that evening with a large vanilla cake that had the words “Happy Birthday Keith!” written on it, and Keith couldn’t hide the small, pleased smile on his face. Lance met his eyes over the candles as the others were singing happy birthday, and winked. Keith grinned at him, flushed and happy, and Lance patted himself on the back for a job well done. 

Keith wore his new jacket around often for someone who claimed he didn’t care about fashion. Lance let it slide-- most of the time-- but he took Keith’s newfound blitheness as an opportunity to get closer to the guy. Lance was physically affectionate with his friends - and Lance now liked to think that he and Keith were friends. Keith, on the other hand, was not a very touchy person, so Lance took it upon himself to at least establish some kind of contact, usually in the form of face masks. 

_November_. 

Lance somehow found himself sitting cross legged on the bathroom floor with Keith, Lance’s face products strewn around them and Keith’s hair in a ponytail with his bangs pinned back with a small red clip. He didn’t know how he managed to convince Keith to join him, but he wasn’t going to question it too much. “All self-respecting men need clear skin, Keith,” Lance said, gently smearing the mask across Keith’s forehead, careful not to drop any of it on the tile floor.

“ _I'm_ the gay one, remember?” Keith teased.

“Fuck your gender stereotypes, Keith,” Lance fired back. “How do you expect to pick up dudes when your skin looks like a Jackson Pollock painting? By your logic, I’d be the gay one in this relationship.”

“Don't tease me like that, Lance,” Keith grinned, though there was something buried deep in his expression that Lance couldn't place, so he chalked it up to his imagination and continued with his routine. The next morning, Keith admitted that his skin definitely felt smoother, and Lance never felt more alive.

Their relationship seemed to shift after that night. They grew closer through the power of facial masks, a bonding moment that Lance hadn’t expected but definitely wasn’t complaining about. Keith was more receptive to Lance’s casual touches, and topics like Keith’s sexuality that had been more or less ignored had become something of an inside joke between them. Keith would pretend to flirt with Lance. Lance would pretend to flirt back. Keith knew Lance was straight, of course, but all the fake flirting didn’t threaten Lance in the slightest, unlike other straight guys Keith knew. 

There was the time Keith somehow steamed the bottom right off the pot. Lance nearly cried from laughing at the downright _offended_ expression Keith wore as he eyed the destroyed pot as if it had broken just to spite him. “I just wanted to steam broccoli,” he muttered.

“That’s not the only thing steaming around here,” Lance laughed, referring to the redness in Keith’s cheeks.

Keith huffed slightly before raising an eyebrow at Lance with a challenging smirk. “If you think I’m hot, Lance, all you had to do was say so.”

“Aw, Keith, you _know_ I think you’re hot,” Lance winked, and Keith rolled his eyes as he started to clean up the mess he’d made. “Don’t worry, your looks make up for your poor housewife skills. If I were gay, I’d marry you in a second.”

“Be still, my beating heart.” Keith deadpanned.

Lance wiggled his eyebrows, laughing when Keith smacked him in the ass with the dustpan as he passed by.

That was their banter. Challenge, tease, flirt, tease some more. Hunk and Pidge, when they came by to hang out, could hardly believe that the Keith that Lance was winking and blowing exaggerated kisses to was the same Keith they’d heard complaints about for an entire two weeks after Lance moved in.

When Pidge mentioned this, in her usual blunt way, Keith didn’t even look up from the TV screen to say, “I'm an alien body snatcher that kidnapped the original Lance and planted a clone that's programmed to do everything I say.”Pidge let out a bout of raucous laughter and punched Lance in the arm with an enthusiastic, “I like him. Let’s keep him.” 

Lance had scowled and stuck his tongue out at the both of them, but in truth it was good that his other friends liked his roommate. He liked Keith, too.

Hell, even his _mom_ liked Keith. She, a couple of his siblings, and his nieces and nephews had all come by to visit for family weekend in late November, and as soon as they got to their apartment it was a cooking and cleaning frenzy and _how can you live like this, Lancito, mijo, estás tan flaco, help me with these groceries so I can cook enough food to last you and your roommate until Christmas, no me pelees, coño._ Lance was used to the constant noise and shouting, so he just bit his tongue and rolled with it, but when Keith came back from class and found two small children running around the living room and a sharp-voiced Cuban woman shouting instructions from the kitchen, he had frozen in the doorway in shock. 

Lance had been passing by the front door with a pot full of rice and an exasperated expression on his face, and when he saw Keith looking at his niece and nephew with a look akin to terror, he smiled apologetically. 

“Hey, man.” Lance walked over, hoisting the pot a bit higher and shooting Keith a sheepish grin. “Sorry about this. I told you my family was coming for the weekend, right?”

“Uh…” Keith tugged his coat off, eyes still locked on the children that were playing some sort of game around the coffee table. “Yeah. This is them?”

Lance turned around to gesture at the two kids, who paused in their game to peer up at Keith. Keith seemed to squirm under the two sets of blue eyes that looked so much like Lance’s. “Yeah, these are my brother's kids. The boy is Ricky, and the girl is Alex. And my mom is--” 

“Lance! _Donde estas con el arroz? Que se van a quemar las habichuelas y no voy a poder hacer el moro!”_

“ _Ay, si Mamí, ya voy! Que llego mi_ roommate!”

Lance switched languages mid-sentence like it was nothing, apologetic expression falling away to one of childish irritation. Keith raised his eyebrows at the single English word he caught, _roommate_ , but before he could make any response, a short woman with Lance’s soft brown hair and eye-crinkling smile rounded the corner. 

“Ah! You must be Keith!”

“Uh… Yes. Hi.” Keith got a surprisingly strong handshake from the woman who could only be Lance’s mother. Lance grimaced at him from behind, and Keith only shook his head to say it was fine. Because… it was, he supposed.

Mrs. McClain had Lance’s energy and loudness, but a much more commanding presence, and after tutting over Keith briefly (“My goodness, you’re so skinny too! Do you boys ever _eat_ around here?”) she shooed Lance into the kitchen to help her cook. Lance didn’t so much as complain once, though he did shoot Keith a disgruntled look, and Keith figured that had to say something about Mrs. McClain’s parenting skills. 

Keith awkwardly followed the two into the kitchen where it seemed like Mrs. McClain was cooking an entire feast. She jabbered away in Spanish, and Lance responded just as naturally, occasionally glancing at Keith as if to make sure everything was alright. The shorter boy just watched for a moment before washing his hands and asking Mrs. McClain how he could help, almost timidly. 

Mrs. McClain put him to chopping onions, and by the time the three of them had finished cooking and Lance’s older sister and brother-in-law had finally come back, she was referring to Keith as _mijo_ and inviting him home to visit Lance. Keith turned pink, so Lance had assured him that Hunk had gotten the same treatment and that is was no problem.

Now, everytime Lance FaceTimes home, his mother asks how Keith is doing, and if they’re in the house at the same time, she even demands he put “my other son” on the line. Lance didn’t mind, of course. Keith seemed to enjoy the attention, and his smile made Lance feel warm inside, so he put up with the minor annoyance.

Although, Lance’s mother didn’t always have the best timing when it came to her phone calls. She would call when Lance was in the shower, or at the movies, or occupied with his schoolwork. It hadn’t happened yet, but to tell the truth Lance was dreading the day his mother would call when he was in the middle of a hook up.

You see, Lance had an… _arrangement_ with one of the girls in his gen-ed’s. Lance wouldn’t necessarily call it a _Friends_ With Benefits type situation, since he and Nyma really didn’t talk outside of their exploits or class. Acquaintances With Benefits? Nah, just call her what she was: a fuck buddy.

All it would take is a simple text and Nyma would be knocking on the door to the apartment. Nyma was a tall girl, pale skin and wheat-colored blonde hair that she always kept tied back in a high ponytail. She was beautiful, and Lance was incredibly proud of himself for somehow arranging himself such an ideal situation

Keith wasn’t stupid. He knew about Nyma, in the same way that Lance knew about the guys Keith brought home. Keith made sure to double check Lance’s work or gym schedule before having people over, but in the rare instances when horny mid-20’s boys with healthy sex drives get the urge, he was discreet enough that Lance didn’t see or hear anything he wouldn’t want to see or hear from anyone else, and Lance did the same when it came to having Nyma over.

It was that way for a while, and everything was working out just as Lance would have wanted it to. But something was changing in him. Normally he didn’t have a problem when Keith gave him a nod, and the guy he was dragging behind him gave a shy little wave as they passed by the living room towards the bedrooms. But lately, there was a feeling of resentment that bubbled in Lance’s gut whenever Keith had another guy over, and it was throwing him for a loop. Watching Keith laugh at something the other guy said, or the bedroom eyes they made at each other, made Lance fidget uncomfortably at the tense, tight feeling in his stomach.

Again, Lance would like affirm that he has never considered himself homophobic in any way, shape, or form. He’s a lover not a fighter, love is love, all that. So the bitterness he felt, knowing that Keith was in the other room with a dude, left him reeling. Soon Lance could barely stand to be in the apartment when Keith had company. It even started to affect his arrangement with Nyma; he hadn’t called her in at least a month now, and she hadn’t called him. Could he just be sexually frustrated?

Waking up in strangers’ beds after a night at a club didn’t help, Lance soon realized. He still could barely look Keith in the eye. Their rapport, which had been light and fun until now, only went one way. Keith tried to crack a joke, or make a flirty remark, but it almost always went unreciprocated.

_February_. 

Keith finally brought it up. “Hey, Lance, are you feeling okay?” He asked over his chicken fried rice, one eyebrow raised in concern.

Lance poked at his shrimp lo mein with a singular chopstick, flashing Keith one of his practiced fake smiles. “Yeah, dude, why wouldn’t I be?”

Keith leaned back in his chair, brows furrowed slightly over his dark eyes. One hand fiddled with his chopsticks, the other rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, almost as an afterthought. “I’ve gotten good at reading you, Lance,” he said. The show playing on the television in the background cuts to commercial. “Something’s bothering you.”

Of course Keith would notice. While he was pop culture illiterate, he was pretty good at reading body language, and Lance was an open book.

Lance shrugged, staring at his food intensely. “Things just haven’t been going all that great with Nyma, that’s all,” Lance said, which was technically true. “I think I’m gonna call it off.”

Keith let out a deep hum of understanding, tilting his head slightly “What’d she do?”

“Huh?”

Keith waved his chopstick in the air casually. There was a piece of fried rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. Lance felt a sudden urge to brush it off.“For you to break up with a fuck buddy, she had to have done something.”

“How do you know it was something she did? What if it’s me?”

Keith shrugged. “We’ve all got our issues. But from what you’ve told me about Nyma - which is a lot, by the way - she seems more like the kind to cause trouble than you.” He raised a brow at Lance, as if challenging him to deny it. 

Lance shoved noodles into his mouth, chewing to put off answering. As if sensing that unwillingness, Keith changed the subject.

It was not brought it up again, and the last few months of their school year passed uneventfully. True to his word, Lance broke it off with Nyma, who, not to Lance’s surprise, didn't take it too hard. To be honest, neither did he. It was honestly harder to say goodbye to Keith for the two months he would be spending at home than it was to say goodbye to his fuck buddy of several months. Keith didn’t seem too eager to say goodbye either. Lance credited his innate charisma for that, which Keith had of course inevitably succumbed to, and he told Keith as much. Keith knocked him over the head with a couch cushion in response. 

At his mom’s request, Lance Facetimed Keith almost the moment he settled at home in Miami, and she spent fifteen minutes tutting over how tired the other boy looked and scolding him for not coming to visit for at least a little bit. Lance suspected part of her insistence was because she knew Keith didn’t have a family to go home to, besides Shiro. He had, in fact, invited Keith to visit, but the other boy had insisted that he would be fine. Lance hadn’t been convinced until Keith had punched him in the arm and essentially told him to fuck off.

The summer passed relatively quickly, as do most college summers. Lance lifeguarded at his local beach and spent the majority of his time telling off adults for leaving beer bottles on the sand or snapchatting Keith, Pidge, and Hunk. One of the bonuses of being gone for the summer was that Keith actually responded to Lance’s snapchats. Lance had been trying to keep a streak going with him for months, but Keith always ruined it, and when Lance called him out on it, Keith responded with, “Why do I have to snapchat you when I see you literally every day?” Lance always groaned and called him uncultured, but it was kind of sweet, when you thought about it. Not that he did, you know, think about it.

But now that they _didn’t_ see each other every day, Keith was definitely making an effort to respond to Lance’s pointless snaps of him bored at work, or the cute snaps of his dogs and his _sobrinos_. Their streak was at twenty-three days when Lance finally pointed it out. It was during one of their Facetime calls, which usually turned into them just sitting in a comfortable silence while Lance fiddled with one of his nephew’s lego planes and Keith scribbled something on paper, just enjoying each other’s company, like they did back at their apartment. Lance occasionally glanced up at Keith, then looked back down at the plane. He’d accidentally disassembled it. Oops. Ricky was going to kill him. 

Lance tossed it aside. “Keith.”

“Hm?”

“Have I mentioned I am shocked and proud at your new character development? I didn’t want to jinx it but I think we’re in the clear now. You’ve made such progress! It’s like you’re a whole new Keith.”

Whole New Keith gave him the most unamused look he could muster. “What the fuck are you talking about, Lance?” 

Lance grinned and leaned towards the camera so his face took up almost the whole screen. “Our snap-streak, man! Twenty-three days! What happened to ‘can’t-be-bothered-to-snap-back’ Kogane? Wait don’t answer that. I like this version better. This is what they call ‘personal growth.’”

“Why are you like this?”

“You love me. That’s why we have a twenty-three day snap-streak.”

Keith put his face in his hands and groaned. Lance’s grin widened. “See? You’re not denying it.” 

Keith dropped his hands and stared at Lance blankly. “Well, you know me, Lance. Can’t resist looking at your handsome face at least once a day. If it’s gotta be through snapchat, so be it.” His voice was so deadpan, Lance broke into a roar of laughter. 

It took him a minute to settle down, and when he looked back at the screen, Keith was shaking his head, a small smile on his face. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, the little sting the words might have had overshadowed by the warm fondness in his voice. Lance shot him a wink, and Keith rolled his eyes before getting up and reminding Lance that he had to go to work soon.

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Lance grinned to himself. The weird tension from the end of the year seemed gone now. He wondered if maybe it had been just stress or something, because he’d seen plenty of gay couples kissing and having PDA on the beach this summer and hadn’t felt the same ugly disgust he’d gotten with Keith and his beaus. At the thought of Keith and one of his guys, an echo of that feeling twisted in his gut, but he shoved it away. Whatever might have caused it, it didn’t belong in his life. 

When summer ended and Lance came back to the apartment, weighed down with gifts from his mother and the promise of senior year stress, Keith greeted him with one of his gentle smiles, and Lance swore to himself that whatever was left of his unwarranted homophobia would not raise its ugly head; Keith deserved better than that. 

He should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.

 

**It escalates like this:**

_September_. 

Lance walks in one day to Keith making out with a guy on their couch. He freezes in the foyer, eyes locked on Keith with his with tongue in the other guy’s mouth and a nauseous feeling rising up the back of his throat. Lance twists his expression into one of disgust as a vile taste meets his tongue.

The other guy notices him first. He detaches himself from Keith’s throat and coughs, nodding in Lance’s direction when Keith lets out a whine of disapproval. A whine that dies the second Keith sees Lance in the doorway. The awkwardness is thick enough to cut with a knife, before Lance remembers that his expression is probably not the most appropriate for this situation right now.

He coughs and schools his expression into something embarrassed, which breaks the silence enough for the other guy to stand from the couch and wipe his palms on the thighs of his jeans.

“Uh, hi, you must be Lance.” The guy circles the coffee table to approach Lance, hand outstretched politely. “I’m Rolo.”

Lance eyes Rolo’s hand, but doesn’t take it. Rolo waits a few extra seconds before clenching his hand and dropping his arm to his side.

“Sorry, Lance,” Keith has also stood from the couch, though he makes no move to approach. “Thought you wouldn’t be back for another few hours.”

“They let me leave work early,” Lance says absently, still eyeing Rolo up and down. The guy is pretty average-looking, in Lance’s opinion, nowhere near good enough for Keith. Tall, sandy blonde hair, scruffy five-o-clock shadow, a little lanky but is obviously very toned under his polo. A glimpse of a tattoo on his bicep. Gives off a strong skater boy vibe. Lance doesn’t like him.

The three stand in an awkward silence for a few moments longer before Rolo breaks it. “I guess I’ll… um. Get going, then?”

Keith visably swallows. “I’ll text you.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Rolo turns back to Lance with a small smile. “Sorry again, Lance. It was nice to meet you.”

Lance doesn’t remember exactly what he says, but Keith’s expression sours immediately, and Rolo looks a little taken aback, sucking on his bottom lip as he scoots past Lance and through the front door.

“What the fuck is your problem, Lance?” Keith whirls on him as soon as the door closes behind Rolo. “Why are you being such an asshole?”

“I’m not being an asshole!”

“Yes you fucking are, Lance. I don’t know what Rolo did to deserve that, you’ve literally never had an issue with my hook-ups before.” A raging bonfire has been ignited in Keith’s eyes, and Lance is feeling himself getting defensive. “Do you have a problem with me sleeping with guys?”

“What the fuck, no!”

That only seems to piss Keith off more. “Then what the fuck is your problem?”He crosses his arms, fingernails leaving dents in his biceps. “I didn’t say anything when you brought Nyma over for whatever stupid friends with benefits deal you two had going on!”

“I know, okay, I know!” Lance’s voice is rising against his will. He really doesn’t want to fight right now, but the ugly feeling in his stomach is chanting a battle cry, and months of awkwardness and weird negative emotions surrounding Keith and his hookups is starting to overflow. “But I haven’t had Nyma over since I broke it off in February! But _you keep bringing guys over!_ ”

“And you keep acting fucking weird around them!” Keith fires back. “Whatever you’ve got going on, Lance, it’s starting to affect us.” He gestures between them and Lance’s stomach clenches.

“Those guys aren’t good enough for you!” Lance growls, but doesn’t register what he said. “They’re fuckboys, Keith, and so not worth your time!”

“That still doesn’t excuse you being rude to Rolo!” Keith retorts. “He only came over for a good time and gets my dick of a roommate being rude!”

Lance knows that Keith is right, but he’s in too deep now. “I’ve had a really shitty day, alright!? I don’t care who you sleep with just keep it off the fucking couch. I don’t want to think about that shit when I’m watching _Project Runway._ ”

Keith tries and fails to school his expression. He looks downright murderous, and Lance wonders if he maybe went too far. Keith grabs his jacket -- _the_ jacket, the one Lance got him-- off the peg next to the house keys, shoving his arms through the sleeves and pushing past Lance. “I’m going to Rolo’s.”

“Whatever,” Lance hears himself say.

Keith throws open the door, but pauses just before closing. “And you wouldn’t care if I slept with him as long as I do it as his place and not ours, right.”

“It’s none of my business what you do at someone else’s place.”

The door slams, and Lance is left alone.

 

Keith doesn’t come home that night.

* * *

 

The next day, Lance leaves for class alone and foul-tempered. In his morning lab, he’s not as talkative as he usually is, and Hunk-- sweet, blessed, receptive Hunk-- notices, and gently steers conversation and questions away from the other boy. Lance doesn’t speak for more than a few short, terse sentences, and doesn’t look up from his lab notebook for anything other than the experiment itself. Lance knows he’s being rude, but every time he feels guilty for it, an image of Rolo with his hands tangled in Keith’s hair and Keith’s plaintive whine rings in his head, and the disgust and irritation flare in him once more, followed quickly by shame as his reaction rears its head. He finds himself unable to speak even if he tried.

When the lab ends, Hunk waits beside him for him to finish packing up, and Lance resigns himself for the inevitable question. Hunk cares, and would want to know what was wrong with his best friend. 

Sure enough, as the two of them walk out of the room in silence to meet Pidge for lunch, as was customary on Mondays, Hunk clears his throat. 

“Sooooooooo…”

Lance grunts, eyes fixed ahead. He knows Hunk is going to prod, but that doesn’t mean he has to make it easy for him.

“Lance. Is… is something wrong, dude?”

“It’s nothing, Hunk. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Hunk hesitates, but not in the way that makes him think the conversation is over. He’s testing the water, gentle as ever, but with the steadiness that makes Hunk, well, _Hunk._ “I get that, man, I do. It’s just… I haven’t seen you like this in a while. Maybe not ever? And I just… wanna know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Lance sighs as they near the quad, just outside the lion statue that marks the center of their university and where they always meet Pidge. “It’s fine, Hunk. I just had a bad night, okay?”

He tries not to sound too harsh, but Hunk’s expression falls a bit and the guilt rises in him stronger than ever. Lance stops and claps Hunk’s shoulder with a half-hearted grin. “I promise, it’s not a big deal. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

Hunk nods, somewhat placated, then Pidge suddenly appears at his elbow, glasses glinting in the sunlight. “Talk about what?”

Lance opens his mouth, but Hunk beats him to it. “Lance isn’t having a good day. We should go to Vrepit Sal’s!”

The small, gourmet diner is their place for special occasions. Hunk spent a summer working there, perfecting their menu, and the owner, Sal, credited the massive increase in sales to the big guy. Eating out isn’t their usual move, but sometimes the occasion calls for it, and Lance would be lying if he said he didn’t feel like a famous Vrepit Sal’s shake was in order. 

He nods, and Pidge shoots him a sharp, calculating look before agreeing and rounding out the trio. 

The bus ride to Sal’s is quiet, with Pidge and Hunk murmuring to each other about some complicated electronic circuitry or other, and Lance alternating between looking out the window or glancing at his phone. He almost hopes to see a text from Keith; maybe a complaint about the know-it-all in his astronomy class who speaks with an obnoxious valley-girl accent, or a teasing comment about how his coworker’s butt is so flat compared to Lance’s. Then he remembers the furious clench of Keith’s jaw, the gaping silence of the empty apartment in the morning, and he forces himself to tear his gaze away from the blank screen.

The worst part, he thinks despondently, is that he knows Keith has every right to be upset. Lance _was_ an asshole last night, and he can’t justify his behavior. Keith never did anything in their common areas that he wouldn't want to see from anyone else. Keith respects his space. The only explanation for this… _feeling_ that’s churning in Lance’s gut is something he doesn’t want to believe about himself. That he’d ever be a bigot, a homophobe… it’s shameful. His mother raised him better than that.

He’s drawn out of his reverie by a tap on his shoulder. Hunk gives him a small smile and a tilt of his head to show that they’d arrived at their stop. Lance hoists his bag over his shoulder and follows him and Pidge off the bus and towards the tiny establishment with a warm flashing sign hanging over the packed parking lot. He breathes in the smell of grilled beef and crispy fries, and his stomach rumbles in response. This might be just what he needs. 

The three friends walk in, guided by Hunk, who slides past the hostess like he owns the place. Pidge recklessly tosses her things into an open booth by the jukebox and slides in while Hunk heads over to the kitchen to say hi to Sal. Lance sidles in the booth opposite of Pidge, refusing to look her way.

“Lance.”

Her tone, as usual, is sharp, and his eyes dart towards her on accident before he brings them back to the menu. Not a very good excuse for a distraction, he knows what he’s going to get. Pidge knows that too. 

“When has ignoring me ever worked?”

Lance sighs. “There’s a first time for everything?” He knows it’s a lost cause once he says it. 

Pidge glares at him slightly, but she must see something in his face that makes her hesitate because her face softens. “I know you’re actually upset, Lance. You’re not complaining about whatever is bothering you, which means that it must _really_ be bothering you. You only ever lose the dramatics when it actually matters.”

Lance wrinkles his nose. “Rude,” he mumbles, as Hunk walks back up to the table. Hunk takes one look at the two of them, then plops into the seat beside Pidge. Lance feels a bit put on the spot by the two of them staring him down. 

“What are we talking about?” Hunks says, but Lance knows he has an idea of what has put such a disheartened expression on Lance’s face, and a skeptical one on Pidge’s. 

Pidge speaks before Lance does. “Lance’s bad mood. It’s obviously important, otherwise we’d be hearing all about it.”

“Or maybe I just had a bad night,” Lance counters, frowning. 

“And why is that, Lance?” Pidge gives him a pointed look, and Lance scowls. “You haven’t even called the waitress over to order a ‘diet water,’ and you always do that, first thing, when we come to Sal’s.” She was right; Lance has a notorious reputation amongst waitstaff at Sal’s for being a jokester (and a flirt). He hadn’t even remembered to do it this time. 

“So what’s up? It’s obviously affecting your obnoxiousness.”

“That’s a really roundabout way to say you care, Pidge.” Lance is being worn down, but he won’t give in so easily. 

Pidge puffs up, obviously ready to deny it, but Hunk cuts her off. “Listen, buddy, we don’t have to talk about it. I know you have, like, this thing about avoiding stuff that makes you uncomfortable, or whatever. And we came to Sal’s to cheer you up, not to pressure you into sharing something you’re not ready to talk about.” Hunk-- blessed, sweet, _amazing_ Hunk--raises an eyebrow at Pidge, who shrugs. 

Lance is ready to crow in satisfaction, but Hunk doesn’t give him a chance. “ _But_ \-- and I’m saying this ‘cause we love you, dude-- sometimes it’ll make you feel better to let out what’s bothering you around people who care and might be able to help. That’s what we’re here for, right?” Hunk’s mouth lifts at the corners in his signature ‘I’m a lovely angelic cinnamon roll who only wants to bake cookies and bring joy to my friends’ expression. Lance is weak for that. 

“So, if it’s okay with you, we want to hear it. Maybe over one of Sal’s mushroom swiss burgers with a shot of tabasco, just like you like it.” He concludes, folding his hands in front of him like the saint he is.

Lance doesn’t say anything for a moment, eyes flickering between Hunk’s gentle, patient smile and Pidge’s expectant one. The shame of all his feelings rumbles in his stomach again, but it’s been exhausting, keeping this to himself. He doesn’t want his best friends to think of him any differently, but it’s their job to love him and help him, right? Maybe they’ll have a way to ease this guilt, or to smack some sense into him. He sighs and nods. 

“Okay, fine. But let’s order first, okay? I want my _dulce de leche_ shake.”

Hunk leans back in his seat, and Pidge nods in approval. The waitress comes by to take their orders, and Lance spends the lull between then and the arrival of his milkshake rehearsing how he’s going to tell his best friends he’d suddenly developed acute homophobia towards his pretty awesome roommate (emphasis on _pretty_ ). 

Their shakes (and a complimentary onion ring basket, courtesy of Sal) arrive, and with them comes Lance’s trepidation. Pidge seems to have decided to cut Lance some slack, because she doesn’t immediately prompt him to start talking. She and Hunk sit in silence, sipping on their strawberry-pineapple and mint-chocolate chip shakes, respectively, waiting for Lance to begin. 

Eventually, Lance speaks up, picking at the grain of the wooden table in front of him. “Keith and I got into a fight last night.”

He doesn’t have to look up to know that Hunk and Pidge are exchanging looks. A sullen sip of his milkshake, incredible as usual, gives him a moment to be silent before Hunk addresses him. “About what, man? Roommate stuff again? I thought y’all were fine with that since like, last October.”

“No. Well, yes. I mean… I don’t know, man. It’s not roommate stuff, really, but I guess it is? I just…” Lance shifts uncomfortably, then decides to just bite the bullet. “I got home early and he was making out with some guy, Rolo, just… _right_ there, on our couch, and I lost it.” 

He explains the surge of discomfort and strain at the sight, how sick he felt when he saw Rolo’s hands on him, the way he didn’t hide that disgust and how hurt Keith seemed to be afterwards. He hides his face in his hands as he describes their last words to each other, Keith’s fury as he talked about spending the night at Rolo’s, how he lied when he said it didn’t bother him if Keith slept with the guy at his place, when in reality the idea of Rolo touching Keith, no matter where, made him ill.

“I just don’t get it. I’ve _never_ had this problem before, guys. I’m-- I’m not homophobic, okay? Like you _know_ that! I-- I feel so awful because Keith deserves better than a roommate who can’t accept him, and I _don’t know where this is coming from_!” Lance’s voice becomes slightly shrill towards the end of his rant, and he feels a tell-tale prickling in his eyes, the guilt and chagrin of everything finally flowing freely. 

“I just… I hate that I feel like this, and I don’t know what to do.” He finishes softly, no longer interested in the slightly melted milkshake in front of him. He doesn’t want to look up at his friends, fearing they will be angry at him for being such a bigoted asshole. 

Instead, he hears Hunk shift out of his seat and come around to Lance’s side, sinking in next to Lance and pulling him into a warm, Hunk-certified comfort hug. Lance blinks rapidly to quell the angry tears. 

“I’m sorry, buddy.” Hunk says gently, rubbing Lance’s back with soft, soothing strokes. 

Pidge sighs, which makes Lance finally look up at her. Her expression isn’t angry or pitying, which makes Lance feel a bit better. She looks rather calculating, but not in her usual scary, mischievous way. No, she looks like someone set an equation in front of her that she was sure she had figured out, only to discover that it wasn’t the answer on the key. Puzzled, suspicious, but not angry. 

“You… you’re not upset with me?” Lance asks, voice small.

“Why would we be angry?” Pidge asks, thoughtful air falling away to one of incredulity. “It’s a pretty shitty situation to be in.”

Lance opens and closes his mouth like a fish before snapping it shut. Whatever answer he was expecting, it wasn’t that. “Um.. because I’m being a homophobic dick?”

Both his friends are silent, and he expects them to agree. But then Hunk surprises him again. “About that, Lance. Are you sure that what you’re feeling isn’t, like… jealousy? Cause… this only seems to happen around Keith.” He looks at Lance a little hesitatingly. 

Lance frowns. “I mean… I thought about that though, Hunk. I don’t have anything to be jealous of! I mean, yeah, he definitely has a more active sex life than me, but getting this upset about that seems really strange and just… _irrational_.”

Hunk seems to smile a bit at that, and Pidge snorts a laugh, which makes Lance look up at her in confusion. She seems amused about something, but Lance can’t figure out what. 

“Yeah, see… Lance, I was thinking maybe, you don’t like seeing Keith with other people because… well. You want his attention for yourself.”

Lance processes her words. “But… I’m used to sharing my friends. I don’t get jealous of you when you hang out with Hunk.”

Pidge mumbles, “I should hope not,” which only confuses Lance more. 

Hunk pats his shoulder. “I think maybe it might be a different kind of attention, buddy.” 

“What do you mean?” Before either of the two can answer, though, a thought strikes Lance and his scowl deepens. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I fucked up. He didn’t come home and he’s pissed at me, and for good reason.” He sulks, meddling with the straw of his shake. Hunk sighs. 

“It’s just a fight, dude. Apologize, and it’ll be fine. Keith cares about you.”

“I guess.” The guilt doesn’t go away, and Hunk must sense that because he elbows Lance enough to make the lankier boy sit up.

“C’mon. We came here to try and cheer you up. You talked about what was bothering you, now we can talk about something else. Do you wanna hear about the robotics project Pidge came up with for extra credit?”

Lance feels a rush of gratitude for his friend. Telling someone else about what had been upsetting him did relieve some of his anxieties, but nothing could be done about it right now, and thinking about facing Keith was not helping. A distraction was welcomed, and Hunk was here, offering it up to Lance like a lifeline. Lance will happily take it. “Sure, man. Take itaway.”

Pidge and Hunk fall into an animated description of an AI drone she is designing (“Remotely Operating Variable Encoder Robot, or R.O.V.E.R for short!”) and Lance listens, appreciative of his friends, who are willing to listen and comfort him even when he is in the wrong. He doesn’t forget Keith, but for a moment, he is able to imagine that things between them are okay. He’ll face the music later.

Later turns out to be an hour, because when Lance gets home, Keith is there, sitting on the couch, a bowl of cereal in his lap and eyes trained on some true crime show playing on television. Their eyes meet from where Lance stands in the foyer, a strain palpable in the air between them.

Keith raises his hand with the spoon in it and raises the unoccupied fingers in a gesture Lance can only interpret as a minimalist wave. Lance raises his own hand to return the greeting, and Keith goes back to watching TV. Lance wants to say something, maybe to show that things are okay, that he’s sorry and wants to continue things like they were before. A hello, or something like that. But his curiosity gets the better of him, and he finds himself speaking without thinking. 

“Where --” Lance coughs, tries again. “Where’d you go?”

Keith doesn’t look away from the screen. “Rolo’s. Then Shiro’s.”

Lance nods. “Ah,” he says, voice small.

Lance shuffles past the living room towards his bedroom. He pauses before opening the door. _Just turn around and apologize,_ he thinks at himself angrily, willing his hand to let go of his bedroom door handle and his feet to take him back towards Keith. But his hand does the exact opposite of what he wants, instead twisting open the handle, and his feet betray him as he enters the room and kicks the door shut behind him.

Lance never gives an apology, and Keith never asks for one. Things continue as they did normally, but there is a noticeable difference in the interactions between them. Keith is more reminiscent of his old self when Lance moved in; resigned, keeping to himself and sticking to speaking when spoken to. Lance falls back to square one, slowly peeling open Keith’s layers like the antisocial ogre he is. He tries to get some of their old repertoire back; he approaches Keith when he gets back from classes one day, holding up two face masks and a wry grin.

“Hey, Keith.”

“Hey.”

“I just got these new facemasks that are supposed to make your face smell like coconut, wanna try it out with me?”

Keith eyes the packets, and Lance sees a spark of what he hopes is _his Keith_ in the other boy’s expression before it vanishes. “Not today, Lance,” he sighs. “I have a huge paper due in the morning and the library kicked me out for breaking the printer so I really need to get this done.”

“O-oh. Okay.” Lance tries not to sound disappointed. “I’ll tell you how it goes, then.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Keith disappears into his room, and Lance sits in the bathroom alone, thinking that it’s simply too big for just one person.

 

* * *

 

**It ends like this:**

Lance finally snaps. 

Not literally, and not at Keith either. He still feels bad enough about the argument and his own behavior recently that he’s been walking on eggshells around Keith, who has been equally wary around him-- not that the wariness isn’t unwarranted. But the tension and awkwardness in the apartment is exhausting him. It’s been over a week, and Lance can’t take it anymore. He ends up picking up extra shifts at work, to the point where his manager keeps giving him suspicious glances every time she walks past the bar where he’s become an almost permanent fixture. 

It’s Saturday evening, getting close to closing time. He’s been wiping down the same glass for nearly half an hour while one of the patrons, an older man he has no recollection of ever seeing in the bar before, nurses his fifth beer and complains loudly about an argument he’s having with his best friend about some woman they both had a crush on in high school and had just seen at their high school reunion. 

“I mean, who said ‘e could act like tha’, huh?” the man slurs. He pauses to take another swig of his beer, now nearly empty. “‘E’s supposed to be m’ best friend.”

Lance hums in acknowledgement. “That does sound tough.” Lance is about as disinterested in this story as he sounds. Listening to drunken rants is part of his job description, but that doesn’t mean he has to dish out life-changing advice with every drink. He doesn’t have much to say on this guy’s problem anyway. Both guys seem to be acting pretty stupid, if you ask him, but listening to someone else’s problems are a welcome distraction from his own. 

“Is not like ‘e doesn’t _know_ how I felt, y’know? I tol’ him ages ago,” The man squints at his beer bottle like it personally wronged him and grunts. “ ‘n he told me ‘e respected that but now ‘e suddenly changed his mind and wants to be a _dick_ about it, ‘n now we ain’t talkin’ no more!” Lance pauses mid wipe.

The patron slides the empty bottle across the bar and continues. “Gimme another one. ‘E’s an asshole,” he grumbles, all eloquence lost. Lance sets the glass down.

“Well, maybe he _knows_ he’s being an asshole, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. Like, maybe he feels guilty because he knows you deserve better than that but for some reason his emotions get the better of him even if they’re stupid and unreasonable and _wrong_. And he didn’t feel like that at first and he doesn’t know why the feelings changed in the first place-- about her, I mean.” Lance realizes he’s leaning forward over the bar towards the patron who is just looking at him, confused and ruddy. His voice was also louder than he intended. His manager is watching him from behind the man, eyes narrowed. 

“Uh--”

“I don’t believe two such good friends should ever fight over a woman.” His manager’s posh British accent cuts off whatever Lance was about to say as she makes her way over to the bar and gently sets her hand in front of the patron, signaling to Lance that he was cut off. “True friendships are worth much more than silly crushes.” She waves down the other bartender. “Mark, could you please get this gentleman a glass of water.”

“Sure thing, Allura.”

Mark comes over to tend to the man, and Allura turns her kind but firm gaze back on Lance, jerking her chin towards the other end of the bar. Lance sighs and picks up the glass he was wiping. He recognizes that expression on Allura’s face. 

Lance follows her to the far end of the bar, away from the other patrons and employees.Allura slides onto a barstool and eyes him. Lance avoids her gaze and begins nervously wiping down the glass again. Neither speak for a moment.

Finally, Allura sighs. “Lance, you’ve been cleaning that glass for the last hour. That’s enough. What’s bothering you?”

Lance scowls at the glass, setting it back down on the counter. “Nothing. I’m just doing my job. Listening to the customers, cleaning glasses, serving beers. What else am I supposed to be doing?”

Allura arches a perfectly shaped brow. She is easily one of the most beautiful women Lance had ever seen. Lance had spent a good portion of his first few months on the job flirting with her, though it had only taken three firm shutdowns for him to realize she was way out of his league. But the friendship that had blossomed from his embarrassment made the humiliation worth it. 

...Even if he did still try to flirt with her sometimes. 

But he couldn’t get away with flirting right now. She was on a mission. “You rambled, Lance, and you ramble when you’re nervous. And that man may have been too drunk to notice how defensive you seemed, but I certainly am not. What is going on with you? You’ve been working more than usual and you’re also surprisingly less obnoxious.”

“Wow, I can just _feel_ the love.”

“ _Lance_.”

Lance rolls his eyes, but the guilt is still churning in his stomach. He wants to get defensive, or irritated, but he keeps remembering the emotionless expression on Keith’s face when Lance stepped out of the apartment today, and his shoulders slump. “Ugh. It’s just… I feel like an asshole, Allura.”

“In the usual Lance way, or in an even worse way?”

Lance gives her a flat look. Allura bites her lip apologetically, shifts her weight on the barstool and steeplesher fingers in front of her thoughtfully. “Right, sorry. Serious conversation. Continue.”

Lance leans forward, tossing the towel over his shoulder and resting his elbows on the counter. “Just… try not to judge me, okay?”

He takes a deep breath and recounts the same story he told Pidge and Hunk in Vrepit Sal’s, about his weird feelings and his guilt and Keith’s righteous frustration. He includes his friends’ observations on the situation, and describes the apartment’s tense atmosphere over the last week or two. How much he wishes for things to go back to normal, but also how terrified he is of seeing Keith with another guy as soon as they are. Allura listens in silence, manicured nail swirling at the pattern etched into the counter’s wood. When he finishes, she fixes a sharp blue-eyed gaze on him and huffs.

“You absolute _oblivious_ walnut.”

Lance gapes. “Wait. What?”

“You completely daft, obtuse, soggy left shoelace! Are you telling me you have absolutely no idea what is going on in that mind of yours?”

“Um.”

Lance doesn’t even get to respond because she’s ranting again. “You just recounted that entire story and you legitimately haven’t been able to put the pieces together. Lance, I adore you but you really are _thick_.”

“I have no idea what is going on, but you’re insulting me a lot and it hurts.”

He wants to be offended, but Allura is difficult to be angry with, so instead he just stares and waits for an explanation. Allura mumbles to herself then passes a hand through her silver hair. “Lance. You have crush on Keith.”

It’s like someone shut off the sound in the whole building. Lance feels like water closed over his ears; the sound of his own voice sounds muffled as he stares at his manager in shock. “Excuse me?”

“You. Have a _crush._ On Keith. Listen to me, and don’t freak out. I have a feeling you’ve been doing plenty of that already.” She gives him a stern look and Lance’s mouth snaps shut. “You obviously love spending time with him. You want to make him happy. You care about him. But you also get jealous when you see him-- and _only_ him-- around other guys. That feeling of disgust? It’s not homophobia, Lance. Quite the opposite, really. It’s the gut-churning, heart-aching, nauseating feeling of wanting to be with someone while they’re with someone else.”

Lance is unable to formulate words right now, which is just as well because Allura is on a roll. “It’s that feeling of calm and comfort when you see them after a long day. It’s closeness of a best friend, but it somehow feels wrong to call them your friend, like there’s a better word for it. They’re the first person you tell anything. The person who you feel you could trust to have your back. Your teammate in life.. You can pick them out of a crowd almost _instantly_. Your heart aches when they’re away and soars when they come home. It’s _that_ feeling, Lance.”

Allura makes eye contact with Lance as he tries to process her words. “But--” his voice comes out a bit choked, so he clears his throat and tries again. “But I like girls. I--”

Allura’s gaze softens. “You can like both, Lance. It’s not mutually exclusive. It’s a new age, and there are plenty of sexual orientations that aren’t just one or the other. You can’t look at me and tell me that in all your time with Keith, touching him never gave you butterflies? His smile never made your stomach swoop? You’ve already told me you think he’s handsome. It’s okay to be attracted to that, you know.”

Lance stares at a knot in the wood of the bar in front of him and watches his interactions with Keith over and over in his head. The warmth in his gut when Keith laughed at one of his jokes. The thrill when his hand brushed aside the soft strands of his bangs while spreading a face mask around his eyes. The jolt in his chest when Keith came home from work, covered in motor oil and with his hair pulled back, forearms bare and jawline exposed. 

And the tug of frustration when another man brought out that laugh. The queasiness when some other guy was touching that hair, brushing his hands along that jawline, kissing that neck.

Lance swallows. Oh my God.

“Oh my God.” Someone call the I.T. department because Lance_McClain.exe has stopped working.Lance looks up from the counter, eyes wide. “Oh my God. Allura.”

Allura leans back, sighing, a small smile on her face. “Yes. Don’t freak out, Lance.”

“I like Keith. Like… actually like him. Romantically. As more than friends.”

“That _is_ what ‘romantically’ tends to mean, yes.”

“I was… jealous? This whole time? Not homophobic. Jealous.”

“I’m sure that actually comes as a relief to hear, despite how jarring this realization must be for you.”

He can’t help it. He starts to laugh. All this time, he was terrified of being an awful person, full of bigotry towards one of the kindest, most important people in his life, and it turns out that he actually just liked them a lot more than he had anticipated. He really _was_ an oblivious walnut. Allura chuckles with him, relieved that he seems to be taking it relatively smoothly. 

“Holy shit. Pidge and Hunk must be smacking their heads into a wall right now.”

“I’m sure they’ll just be happy you finally figured it out.” She pauses to think. “Maybe after teasing you for a while about mistaking it for homophobia at first.”

“Fair, honestly, though they’ve done that a lot already.” He falls silent, staring ahead blankly as he processes and re-processes the information. It’s a lot to take in. 

The two of them don’t speak for a few minutes, Allura giving him the time he needs to orient himself. The bar is relatively empty, and she waves the few incoming patrons towards the other bartender. After a while, she speaks up. 

“You know what I find interesting, though?” She asks, pursing her lips in thought. 

“What?”

“Back when you said that you would try to convince him you didn’t mind who he slept with. You said he got more frustrated with you.”

“Yeah. I guess he didn’t believe me.”

“Maybe.” She hesitates, though, and Lance tilts his head.

“What’s with that expression? You’re freaking me out even more. What is it?”

“It’s just… he brought up your old friend-with-benefits situation, didn’t he? That girl, Nyma. It seems to me that maybe, _just maybe,_ he sounded like he had been jealous of Nyma, and he wanted you to be that way too, about him and his dates.”

Lance is gaping at her again. “Like… he wants…”

“Like he _wanted_ you to be jealous.”

“But why would he…” Realization dawns on him and he trails off. Allura watches him carefully. Lance’s brows bunch over his eyes and he scratches the back of his neck. 

“But I may be wrong,” Allura inserts quickly, frowning as well. The look on Lance’s face, so tense after such a jarring revelation, must have made her realize it might not be the best time to try to dig into that particular can of worms. Lance appreciates that. 

“Right,” Lance laughs, but it sounds more nervous than humorous. Allura stands, reaching over to give his shoulder a squeeze. The Lance from one year ago would probably have fainted from the casual gesture of affection. Now, Lance wants to faint for entirely different reasons. 

Allura smiles at him reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Lance. You’ll figure everything out. At least now you’re one step closer, right? And this way, you know there won’t be any more fights between you.”

Lance nods. “Right…”

Because now he knows how to fix the problem, doesn’t he?

The only issue is mustering up the courage to.

* * *

 

The next few days are mostly Lance just sitting on his ass trying to wrap his head around everything. Lance is attracted to Keith. Romantically. This is a confirmed fact. There are two ways Lance could deal with this new information:

One. Lance confesses to Keith. Keith would reject him, obviously, because Lance is nothing like the guys Keith brings home and is therefore not Keith’s type. This path would run the risk of ruining their friendship even further, to the extent that Lance might lose Keith forever. He would move out, change his name, transfer universities, move to a new state, and never contact Lance again. Lance doesn’t know if he could bear that.

Two. Lance doesn’t confess to Keith. This option was even more terrifying than the last; what if Lance let these feelings fester inside him but did nothing, and then Keith got himself a boyfriend? Like a serious boyfriend. Lance doesn’t know if he could even look at Keith if he had to see him with another guy in a relationship beyond hook up status, since his previous encounters with Keith’s harem of dudes hasn’t proven to be very mature. Lance would probably end the friendship simply by being a douche. Lance would move out, change his name, transfer universities, move to a new state, and never contact Keith again. He _definitely_ wouldn’t be able to handle that.

Lance’s internal struggle keeps him up at night and distracts him at work. Allura sends him encouraging glances when she can but she knows that this is a crisis Lance has to deal with on his own. Hunk and Pidge, when they see Lance again, seem to sense the change in him. It takes one cautious inquiry, and five minutes of hysterical laughter at Lance’s expense, for them to get the basic gist of what’s going on and offer him their full-- but distant-- support.

It’s the Tuesday after his talk with Allura when Lance finally sits straight up in bed and smacks himself on the cheeks. That’s it. He has to tell Keith. Even if it risks their friendship being destroyed for good. Keith doesn’t deserve Lance’s cold shoulder, he deserves honesty, and if he hates Lance afterwards then, well, that just means their friendship wasn’t stable enough to begin with. 

Tomorrow. He’ll confess to Keith tomorrow.

Lance isn’t very religious, but he throws a quick prayer out to Aphrodite, Eros, Cupid, Pavarti, and any other gods and goddesses of love he learned about in his early civilization gen-ed for good luck.A couple of saints too, so his devout Roman-Catholic _abuela_ doesn’t physically manifest in his room and throw her _chancleta_ at him.

Wednesday comes too quickly. He barely pays attention in class, eyes constantly flitting to the clock on his phone as he drives himself crazy playing out every possible scenario that could take place when finally talks to Keith. He doesn’t see Hunk today, and Pidge is a lot less involved in Lance’s emotional roller coaster of a love life, so he gets away with barely speaking to anyone all day. Whether or not that’s a good thing is to be determined, as he’s managed to work himself into a paranoid mess by the time he heads back to their apartment for the day. 

Once he’s home, he’s restless, pacing from room to room, reorganizing pillows or books and just generally being a disaster, before he forces himself to sit down on the couch and turn the TV on. _No more freaking out_ , he tells himself. It’s gonna happen one way or another. It takes maybe half an hour for those words to have any sort of calming effect. Eventually he lulls himself into a quiet sort of anxiousness, manifesting in the rapid bob of his knee and the slight pout of his bottom lip.

Lance lazes on the couch, scrolling idly through his phone and paying half-attention to the Tarantino movie marathon ABC has going. He tries not to notice that the clock is ticking closer and closer to the usual time frame that Keith arrives home from his work at the auto body shop. Ticking closer to the time when Lance has agreed with himself to finally confront Keith about his feelings. Well, _confront_ might not actually be the right word here, but Lance’s nerves are taking over again and he’s gonna get carpal tunnel at this rate if his thumb scrolls any faster…

Boots. Boots on the stairwell. Lance holds his breath. They’re getting closer. Is it his neighbor? Keys jangling, the lock clicking. Nope, not the neighbor. Holy shit, this was happening.

Lance tries his best to look casual as he watches the door open and Keith slide inside out of the corner of his eye, a task which is proving increasingly difficult as he notices Keith’s grimy state. Granted this is his usual appearance upon his return home from work, but now that Lance has finally accepted the ‘Wow Keith is cute and I’m gayer than I thought I was’ side of himself, he can better appreciate the rugged attractiveness of Keith’s hair tied into a ponytail, exposing the back of his neck, which shines with with what looks like oil or grease. His tank top is also stained, made worse when Keith absentmindedly rubs his hands across his front, unintentionally yanking down the neckline far enough to expose his collarbone.

Lance swallows.

“Hey,” Keith says as he tosses his keys into the cup by the doorway.

“Hey,” Lance parrots, and then mentally smacks himself. “There’s actually a Tarantino marathon going on… dunno which one it is right now but I know you like his stuff so if you wanna watch…?”

He leaves the invitation hanging in the air, hoping the “ _with me”_ Lance mentally tacked on to the end of his question was implied enough so that even Keith could pick it up.

He evidently does; his eyebrow quirks slightly as he contemplates his response. It had been a while since both of them had actually sat down to watch a movie together, so it seemed clear that Lance’s offer was his way of reaching out.

Keith shrugs. “Sure. Lemme take a shower first.”

“Sounds good. Want me to pause it?”

“Nah, ‘s cool. Seen them all anyway.” He shrugs his bag over his shoulder and makes his way past the couch, nodding at the television screen as he goes. “That’s _Inglorious Bastards,_ by the way.”

“Oh. Cool. Okay then.”

Keith disappears into the bathroom, and Lance waits until he hears the shower water turn on before he screeches into a pillow. _FUCK,_ that was awkward. _Okay. You got this, Lance. It’s just feelings talk. You’re good at feelings. Sorta. Maybe. Not at all._ He was honestly better at repressing feelings than addressing them. God, why were the both of them so socially awkward!

Lance’s crisis continues through the sound of the shower water being replaced by the hair dryer, and he only just barely manages to maintain some semblance of outward calm when Keith exists his room, dressed in a black t-shirt and red plaid pajama pants, to silently join him on the couch. He sits as far from Lance as he can on their small couch, and Lance tries not to let that get to him.

The movie goes on. Fades out. Commercial. The next one starts.

The tension is thick enough to drown in, and Lance isn’t sure how much longer he can stand it. Keith has been just as quiet as he usually is, his focus totally on the film playing on the television right now. Lance doesn’t even know which one it is; he’s too busy staring at Keith out of the corner of his eye. Since his talk with Allura, and the conclusion that maybe Lance wasn’t exactly as straight as he thought he was, it was so much easier to see Keith as a _man_ rather than just a friend. A rather attractive man at that. Lance had always admired Keith’s weird sort of “bad boy” aesthetic, how easily he pulled off a mullet like the hairstyle was made just for him.

Lance wants to run his fingers through that hair so badly.

Keith chooses that moment to look over at Lance, and uh oh. Lance just got caught staring. Keith’s eyes narrow slightly.

“What, Lance.”

Lance bites his lip. Might as well nip this in the bud. He draws in a deep breath and turns his body to face Keith fully, one leg pulled up on the couch and the other dangling off the edge, arm slung across the back to give an air of casualness to hide his nerves. Keith takes note of the sudden shift in Lance’s mood and turns his head completely, frowning a bit.

“Keith, I want to apologize.”

“Lance? Apologizing?” His eyes widen a touch, tone completely deadpan. A mixture of Lance’s dramatics and Keith’s own dryness. Seeing how he has rubbed off on Keith makes butterflies flutter in his stomach. 

“Don’t be a dick, Keith,” Lance teases half-heartedly, looking away for a moment before snapping his eyes back up. _Focus._ “I just… wanted to say that I was an asshole before to Rolo because I was jealous.”

Keith’s eyebrows quirk slightly. “What do you have to be jealous of? It’s not like you have any trouble finding people to sleep with. Like Nyma.” He says her name like it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

“I haven’t had Nyma over in months, Keith, you know that.” Lance presses on. “I was jealous of Rolo.”

At that, Keith’s eyebrows go so high they disappear into his bangs, and his mouth parts slightly in surprise. Lance groans inwardly; it’s just so fucking _cute._ Whatever trepidation he had disappears with the leap in his heart.

“I just-- Keith, I think I like you. And not in a friendship-roommate kind of way. I mean, like… _like_ , like.” What was he, a first grader? He mentally facepalms, but his mouth is moving without consulting his brain, and so he just keeps talking. “I just didn’t know how to deal with my emotions, cause I was so sure that I was straight. But then I started having, like, one existential crisis after another. I was staring when you got out of the shower and got these… _weird_ feelings in my stomach whenever you’d bring guys over. I didn’t know how to deal with those feelings so they just manifested into major douchebag-y-ness.”

“Lance…”

“And then I consulted Pidge and Hunk, and they told me that it might be jealousy. But like, what could I be jealous of? I was straight, right? Why would I be jealous of the guys you were bringing over? And _then_ I talked to Allura, my boss…”

“Yes, Lance, I know Allura is your boss. I’ve visited the bar you work at.”

“...and apparently there’s this thing called bisexuality? It means you like girls _and_ boys, and so I may not actually be as straight as I thought I was?”

Lance is definitely rambling now, and he knows it. Keith doesn’t move from his position, his eyes never wavering from Lance’s face. Lance can’t read his expression, or maybe he’s just so terrified that he can’t bring himself to try.

“The point I’m trying to make, Keith, is that I think I was jealous of the guys you were making out with because…” Lance swallows. Moment of truth. _Breathe._ “Because I wanted you to be making out with me.”

Keith brings a hand up to cover his mouth, the corner of his eyes crinkling slightly. It takes Lance half a second to realize that he’s trying not to laugh, and Lance lets out an indignant screech. “Don’t make fun of me!”

“I’m not laughing!” Keith says, totally laughing.

“Yes you are!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“I’m just... “ Keith takes a deep breath and removes his hand from his mouth, reaching for one of Lance’s to hold. Keith’s skin is warm, the pads of his fingers rubbing across Lance’s knuckles soothingly. Lance’s nerves fizzle away immediately at his touch. “I’m just happy.”

Lance swallows. Happy Keith is soft, the light from the television they both had forgotten totally about making the colors in Keith’s eyes dance behind his lashes, his face practically glowing as he grins.

“Why?”

It’s Keith’s turn to explain himself. “All the flirting over this past year has been real. I flirted with you, and... you flirted back. But I knew I didn’t have a chance with you since you were straight, and you brought Nyma over sometimes. So I kept bringing guys over to try and get over you.” Keith looks up from their entwined fingers. “Pretty stupid of us, huh.”

“I’m sorry,” Lance says, because it’s the only thing he can say right now.

“Why?”

“Because I thought my jealousy was me being homophobic, and I never thought myself to be that kind of person. I don’t want you to hate me.”

Keith scoots closer on the couch, mirroring Lance’s position so that their knees touch. “I never took you for the jealous type.”

His voice has dropped an octave, and goddamn if that isn’t the sexiest thing Lance has ever heard. Lance practically feels the rumble of it swoop straight into his gut, settling into a warm pulsing weight that leaves him breathless. Keith is leaning in slowly, his eyes half lidded but clear, searching Lance’s face for any opposition for what Lance has honestly been waiting for since the day he moved in.

“Can I try something?” Keith asks, in the same low voice. Lance nods, breath hitching, and Keith smiles slightly as he closes the distance between them.

Lance’s eyes slide shut.

The kiss is chaste, as far as first kisses go. It’s a simple press of lips on lips, Keith being gentle so as to not move too fast, for which Lance is appreciative. This is a first for him, after all, kissing another dude. Lance is pleasantly surprised to find however that it’s not too different from kissing a girl, save for the prickly feeling of light stubble on Keith’s upper lip. Lance decides he likes it. He tightens his grip on Keith’s hand and takes the initiative, parting his lips slightly to run his tongue across Keith’s bottom lip.

Keith responds with a soft sigh, opening up so that Lance can deepen the kiss. The warmth in Lance’s stomach spreads to the rest of his body as Keith’s hand slips from where he was holding Lance’s, sliding up Lance’s arm and neck to cup his face gently. Lance can feel the rough calluses on Keith’s fingers from years of riding his motorcycle, and it makes the taller boy shiver slightly. His own hands make their way, _finally_ , into Keith’s hair, relishing in the softness of the strands against his fingers. He’s been waiting for this for _so long_. Longer than he’d even realized.

A surprised whimper escapes Lance as Keith gently nibbles his bottom lip, and Keith lets out a breathless laugh against his mouth. The hand not cupping Lance’s face slides into his hair, toying with the flyaway strands at the nape of his neck. Lance nudges his way closer, their noses bumping slightly, and the whole thing hits him suddenly, how completely ridiculous the fighting was when it could have been solved so easily by this. Kissing Keith. 

Keith pulls back too soon, and Lance follows him for a moment with a small noise of disapproval. “Keeeeeith,” he whines, opening his eyes when the other boy doesn’t humor him. Keith is staring at him, a soft, fond smile on his face that immediately makes Lance’s cheeks burn. “What?” He asks self consciously. 

“You’re just…” Keith shakes his head, red spreading across his face all the way to the tips of his ears. “I like you _so much_ , Lance.”

This has Lance blushing even more, and the two of them sit there for a moment, trying to get their emotions under control. “So…” Lance says awkwardly, a quirk to his lips that makes Keith’s eyes dart to them quickly before snapping back up to meet Lance’s. “I’m gonna go ahead and say that that was pretty great for the both of us, right? Cause I dunno about you, but I _definitely_ enjoyed it.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot,” he says, and Lance doesn’t have a chance to say something cheesy, like “But I’m your idiot,” because Keith is pulling him in for another kiss. 

* * *

 

They go on their first proper date the following weekend. Keith lets Lance decide on their activity (“We can just go get coffee.” “But Keith we did that all the time as roommates but now I wanna do something special!”), so they end up going to an arcade. Lance will never admit it, but competitive Keith is so much fun to rile up.

“I bet I can beat you at skeeball.”

“Don’t make bets, Lance, you’ll get addicted to gambling.”

“Oh, am I sensing defeat already? I knew you didn’t have it in you.”

Keith smirks, and Lance’s insides burn. “Don’t cry when you lose.”

“I’m not a sore loser like you, Keith. Bring it on.”

Lance does in fact end up eating his words when Keith destroys him at skeeball, but makes up for it when Keith suggests a zombie shooting game. Lance’s eyes ignite immediately, and he expertly shoots down every zombie with eagle-eyed accuracy. When he finishes, he blows imaginary smoke off the barrel and pretends to holster the plastic gun in a thigh holster, shooting Keith a wink and tipping his invisible Stetson.

Keith curls his lip slightly, but can’t hide the excitement in his voice. “Best two of three.”

“You’re on.”

Lance picks the next game, and proves that not only is he an expert sharpshooter but also a skilled dancer as he gets the high score on DDR.

“Best three of five.”

Many curses, attempts at sabotaging, and twenty dollars later, Keith takes the win with a stealthy sinking of the puck in a quite intense game of air hockey. Lance mourns his loss, but Keith makes it up to him with a stolen kiss and a promise to buy him a milkshake. Lance introduces Keith to Vrepit Sal’s, because honestly, why hasn’t he done that yet?

They sit across from each other, slurping their milkshakes and reevaluating every time they had “fake” flirted with each other, seeing it from a different light.

“Remember that time I spilled my coffee all over my English paper?” Lance says, wiping his fingers on a napkin. “It was ‘cause you walked out of the shower and that towel was just _way_ too low, dude.”

Keith snorts into his shake. “Oh yeah, and then you said that it was suddenly very hot in the room.”

“And you said--”

“‘Oh, sorry, I’ll leave,’” they laugh in unison.

Lance sighs happily, swirling his straw lazily in his shake. Keith’s foot gently grazes his calf, and he feels warmth stir in his gut again. “So, Keith…”

“So, Lance.”

“Can… Can I ask you some things?”

Keith nods. “Yeah, I guess.”

“When did you start to like me? In, you know, the gay way.”

Keith snorts. “Gay way?”

“I'm trying, work with me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Keith laughs breathily. He examines his hands for a minute before answering. “I guess… It happened somewhere between you buying me that jacket and the first time you convinced me to try face masks. I remember… thinking that no one had ever really paid that much attention… _Emotional_ attention to me before. Besides sexual-emotional attention, you know? Like… You actually cared about including me, and I really enjoyed talking to you, once you stopped being an insufferable roommate.”

“Shut up, like you were any better.” 

Keith has turned a shade of bright red at this point. “I'm not sure when the fake flirting turned into real flirting but apparently you were all I talked about to Shiro, and I only do that when I really like somebody. Apparently.”

Lance just grins at him, which makes Keith smile despite his obvious self-consciousness. Lance can’t believe how oblivious he was, if not towards his own feelings then at least towards Keith’s affections. When had he ever seen Keith smile or flirt with anyone the way he did with Lance? Yeah, he flirted with the boys he brought home, but, but he had done so with a sort of… casual detachment. In the moment, Lance had been too uncomfortable ( _jealous_ , he corrects himself, willing himself to recognize what he had spent so long denying) to take note of it, but now he remembers the aroused but disconnected expression on Keith’s face every time he pulled a boy into his room, and how that differed from the undeniably soft look he gets every time he looks at Lance. The look that gave him a weird fluttering in his stomach he had initially attributed to pride and friendly fondness. He feels so stupid about it now. 

“Shiro really is going to be insufferable,” Keith says, still grinning, and Lance’s eyes fall to his mouth for the briefest of seconds, wondering if he tastes like the vanilla shake he had been so adamant on ordering, like the unoriginal _butt_ that he is. Lance forces himself to look back up.

“What do you mean?” he asks. 

“When he met you, the first thing he said to me was ‘Keith, he’s cute. What’s going on between you’. And when I started liking you, I mean, when he caught on, he was positive you liked me back. He was so confident that there was something there cause you’d been so excited about getting me something for my birthday. I told him that was just the kind of person you are.” Keith blushes at that, a lovely pink flush that spreads from his cheekbones to the tips of his ears. Lance wants to kiss them too. Is this what dating Keith is going to be like? Lance can’t find it within himself to hate it.

“Wow. Your brother knew before either of us did.” 

Keith grimaces. “Yeah, well.. I definitely wasn’t subtle.”

“I was just just super oblivious.”

“You really _were,_ though.”

Lance scowls and Keith bursts into laughter, which has the Lance fighting to keep the disgruntled expression on his face. “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”

“Would you rather I lied to you?” Keith chortles, covering his grin with his free hand. Lance wants to pull it away so he can see the smile that _he_ had caused. “I was pretty pathetic, trying to touch you every chance I got, pretending to be asleep on the couch just so I could hear you come home and cover me with a blanket.”

Lance lets out a delighted crow as Keith turns, if possible, even redder when he realizes what he’d let slip. “You did _what?!_ ”

“Shut up,” Keith mumbles, staring at their intertwined fingers on the table (when had that happened?). “Since _apparently_ , you were the one who would get face masks for us just so you could touch my face.”

The smile drops off of Lance’s face and he pouts. He knew he shouldn’t have told Keith that. Keith adds, “And I thought you were straight so how was _I_ supposed to know what that meant?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re _both_ oblivious,” Lance grumbles, and when he spots Keith’s mouth opening, most likely to argue the ‘both’ part of Lance’s concession, Lance stands, tugging on Keith’s hand until he’s pulled to his feet. “C’mon. Shakes are on me. Let’s go back and watch a movie.”

Keith starts to protest, but when Lance slides his hand up Keith’s waist, the other boy shivers and lets Lance lead him away.

It’s coming on five pm by the time Keith’s motorcycle roars into the parking lot of their apartment building. Lance dismounts the machine with a stumble, sitting down hard on the curb and massaging his thighs. “Remind me why I let you talk me into riding this death machine again?”

Keith dismounts also, taking his helmet off and shaking his hair out until it falls into place, which should not have been as sexy as it was. Now that he can fully appreciate how attractive Keith is-- and fully recognize how attracted to him he is-- it’s getting to be a lot more difficult to watch Keith do anything without having a… _physical_ reaction. Lance presses his thighs together a little tighter to hide his emerging hard-on. Keith, bless him, doesn’t seem to notice, preoccupied with locking his helmet to his bike. “Because your car is a piece of shit?”

“Don’t insult Blue in my presence like that, she’s just had a lot of love, alright?”

Keith rolls his eyes and holds out a hand to pull Lance to his feet. “Say whatever you gotta say to make yourself feel better.”

Lance leads the way back into their apartment, walking quickly to avoid giving Keith a chance to glimpse how slightly turned on he is right now. “Are you hungry? I think I’ve got some chicken breast I can whip up before we watch Netflix.”

“Sure.” Keith shrugs out of his jacket as Lance sets to work, preheating the oven and tying an apron around his waist. He doesn’t know where Keith has disappeared to, but at this point Keith knows not to intrude when Lance is in chef mode.

Lance pulls out the chicken breasts, not even sure what he’s going to season them with. He impulsively decides on Hunk’s lemon-roasted chicken recipe with broccoli; it’s not too hard and only takes about twenty minutes in the oven. Lance hums Rihanna under his breath as he works, swinging his hips and slicing the lemons to the downbeat.

Something about cooking dinner before a Netflix session shifts his mood from “Date with Keith” to “Regular Night with Keith”. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, and it’s bizzare how easily the change between romantic/coy/slightly arousing, and casual/goofy/domestic takes place. His earlier excitement fades, which is a relief as he wasn’t really sure how to address _that_ so early on in their relationship.

“In ya go,” he says, finally sliding the chicken into the oven. He wipes his hands on a damp rag and is about to reach for the broccoli when he feels two arms wrap themselves around his middle and a chin coming to rest on his shoulder.

“Whatcha making?” Keith asks, hot breath ghosting past the shell of Lance’s ear and _oh lord have mercy. He lied the excitement hasn’t faded it’s back stronger than ever._

“Lemon roasted chicken,” Lance replies, shoving down the emotions (he’s quite good at that, apparently) and turning his head as best he can to peek at Keith’s face. “And broccoli.”

“Mmm,” Keith rumbles in the back of his throat, the vibration doing funny things to Lance’s gut. “Sounds good.”

“Not as good as you,” Lance grins, and Keith tilts his head forward enough to press his lips to the juncture of Lance’s neck and shoulder. Lance visibly shudders, his head falling back slightly and one hand gripping the counter for balance as the other reaches up to gently stroke Keith’s impossibly soft hair.

“You’re right,” Keith murmurs, detaching himself from Lance’s back to instead stand between Lance and the counter, locking his fingers behind Lance’s neck and grinning intoxicatingly up at him. “I am pretty good.”

Screw it. Lance growls and closes the distance, Keith sinking eagerly into the kiss with a groan that Lance swallows. Keith allows Lance to press him against the counter, one of his hands going to Lance’s hair and the other tugging the hem of Lance’s shirt free from the apron straps so that he can press his bare hand against the skin of Lance’s back. Heat spreads across his skin wherever Keith touches him. “You look good in an apron,” Keith huffs against his lips, “but I think I’d prefer you without it right now.”

Lance doesn’t need a second hint. He breaks away from Keith long enough to shimmy out of the apron and drop it across the back of a kitchen chair before he’s coming back, wasting no time in hungrily pressing their bodies together, leaving no space as he inhales everything that is _Keith_. Lance is still getting used to the idea that this is a thing he’s allowed to do now, kissing Keith, so you bet your ass he’s going to take advantage of it.

Keith suddenly makes a small noise of discomfort, and Lance reels back, eyebrows knitted in worry. “Oh my god, Keith, I’m sorry…”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Keith reassures him, pulling him back in for a gentler peck on the lips. “It’s just the counter is digging into my back.”

Lance’s mouth quirks as he gets an idea, and Keith’s suspicious question becomes ayelp as Lance suddenly ducks down, wrapping his arms under Keith’s thighs and lifting him up, shoving cooking supplies out of the way so Keith can take their place. Keith recovers quickly, parting his knees so Lance can come to stand comfortably between them, ankles locking around the small of Lance’s back and arms circling around his shoulders.

“Better?” Lance purrs, burying his face into Keith’s neck and breathing in deep the spicy scent of cinnamon and sweat.

Keith swallows. “Better.”

Lance sucks on the swell of Keith’s collarbone, making sure to leave a bruise that indicates that he was _here,_ and that Keith, _finally_ , was his to mark. He teases, slowly making his way back up the column of Keith’s throat to his ear, leaving a trail of kisses along the sharp curve of Keith’s jaw, before Keith loses patience and drags him back up to find his lips again. Keith kisses like he does everything else; passionately, heated, and certainly not half-assed. From the small noises of encouragement he makes, to the short and heavy breaths he snatches when he manages to drag himself away for even a second-- Lance loves it all. Lance’s shirt has been hiked up so that his entire stomach is showing, Keith’s hands blindly exploring all the soft bumps and curves that normally make Lance a little self-conscious but now make him feel beautiful.

He doesn’t know how long they are like this, but too soon, Keith finally pulls away, putting a hand on Lance’s chest to stop him from following. Lance lets out a small whine of protest, but Keith is staring at him with a slightly confused expression. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“Is something burning?”

It takes a moment for Keith’s words to break through the haze that Lance’s brain has sunken into, but when they do, Lance’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates. “ _FUCK!”_

He shoves away from Keith and scrambles for his oven mitts, yanking open the oven door to receive a faceful of smoke. Keith jumps off the counter to open a few windows as Lance pulls out the definitely-not-edible chicken, blackened to the point that even Lance doesn’t think he can salvage what’s left. The fire alarm doesn’t go off thank goodness, but the apartment smells strongly of burned chicken, something the pizza delivery man mentions when he rings the doorbell forty-five minutes later.

Lance and Keith settle onto the couch with their pizza, Lance with his head in Keith’s lap and Keith’s hand in his hair, laughing at how ridiculous they are. Keith doesn’t even protest when Lance decides to watch Moana, which Lance decides makes Keith the “best person in the whole universe.”

Halfway through the movie though, they end up kissing again, but not at the same fervent pace that had burned their dinner. This was Keith stretching out on the couch until he was face to face with Lance, each boy taking turns planting kisses on the other’s face lazily until they fall asleep.

* * *

 

When Pidge hears about their burnt-dinner adventures, she rocks back into her chair, cackling mercilessly while Lance and Keith sit red-faced on the couch, curled up against one another as a movie plays in the background. Hunk does a slightly better job of hiding his judgement, but Lance catches the telltale grin on his best friend’s face, that traitor.

“So what you’re telling me,” Pidge wheezes, “Is that y’all were so busy making out that you totally forgot the chicken.”

“That is essentially it, yes,” Lance confirms, and throws a pillow at Pidge’s face. She catches it easily.

“And you didn’t even touch the broccoli.”

“We _were_ gonna roast it, but we settled for steaming instead,” Keith supplies helpfully, or unhelpfully, as Pidge gets an evil glint in her eye.

“Did anything else get steamy that night?”

It takes Lance all of two seconds to catch Pidge’s drift. He chucks another pillow, this time actually getting up from the couch to press said pillow against his horrible friend’s face in a miserable attempt to suffocate her to death. Hunk’s eyes have bulged a little at the broached topic, hand over his mouth in what could either be horror or curiosity. Maybe both.

Keith, that sweet little bean, takes a little longer to catch on. But when he does he turns beet red. “ _Pidge!”_

“Sue a gal for being curious!” Comes the muffled reply from beneath Lance’s pillow.

“The only thing getting steamed in here is the bathroom when I drown you in the shower!” Lance screeches.

Funny thing, friends. They love you. They support you. Would probably sacrifice you to a bear in return for an A on a final exam. But they also will mercilessly embarass you in front of your sort-of boyfriend (neither Lance nor Keith had officially put a name to their relationship…) and leave you agonizing over said embarrassment long after they’ve departed for the evening.

Keith is standing in the kitchen washing dishes, his head bobbing a little bit and one foot lifted to scratch the other leg lazily. In his plaid pajama pants and black t-shirt, the same outfit he had been wearing when Lance confessed, his body is all soft curves to combat the sharpness of his tongue, and honestly, Lance has been thinking about hitting that for a while now. It wasn’t until Pidge’s comment earlier that he really started fretting over his and Keith’s lack of… _consummation._

After all, Lance has never had sex with a guy before. It can’t really be all that different, he supposes. He knows where everything goes and how it works, but he can’t shake the slight dread he feels when he considers whether Keith might be... _a top_. Keith has never mentioned it, and honestly Lance isn’t very keen on the idea of taking something up his ass. It was already a big step for him to realize he likes dudes-- or rather, Keith. Going from that to getting railed from behind? He’s not sure he’s ready for that. 

“You okay?”

Lance blinks himself back into reality. Keith is leaning over the kitchen island, drying his hands in a dishrag as he watches Lance with a slight look of concern.

“Oh, yeah!” Lance overcompensates, flashing a bright grin and a set of finger guns in Keith’s direction. “Totally cool dude, just spacing… out…”

Keith’s raised eyebrow indicates he’s not buying any of Lance’s bullshit. Lance drops the act; he knows that Keith can see right through him. He sighs and rests his forehead on the island counter, body hunched uncomfortably over the bar stool. Keith waits until Lance is ready to talk.

“Keith?”

“Hm?”

“Are you a…” Lance swallows, and forces himself to say it. “A top?”

Lance risks a peek up at the other boy from beneath his bangs. Keith’s face has taken on a light dusting of red, but other than that and a pair of slightly widened eyes, he shows no sign of embarrassment.

“I’m a switch, actually. Means I go top and bottom.” Keith sets the dishrag back in place and slides into the second chair next to Lance. “Is this about what Pidge said earlier?”

Lance doesn’t even try to deny it. Keith takes his silence as the confirmation that it is, and lets out a deep breath. “I didn’t realize that would bother you so much.”

“Of course it bothers me!” Lance says, sitting upright in his chair again. “It’s not that I’m not experienced, I am, I swear, but I’ve only ever done it with girls, and honestly I’ve been thinking about fucking you for a while now but I don’t know what I would have done if you topped because I’ll be real, I’m _really_ not looking forward to having a dick up my ass, even if it’s yours, because that legit looks painful as fuck.”

“You’re rambling again.”

Lance huffs. “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

“No problem, Lieutenant Sarcasm.”

“It’s just weird, man, cause I _want_ to take that step with you, and I’m serious when I say I’ve thought about it, but I’m… I mean, I’m a little…” He doesn’t want to say scared, because that’s not it. Besides the fact that he’d _never_ admit to Keith about being scared, he also doesn’t think scared is the right word for it. He trusts Keith implicitly, but this is all so new to him… Luckily, Keith seems to understand without Lance having to continue.

“Lance,” Keith says, taking Lance’s hands gently in his own. “I’m not going to rush you, or make you do anything you don’t want to do.” He smiles, rubbing his thumb over Lance’s knuckles, and Lance feels the tension drop from his shoulders. “If it makes you feel more comfortable, I can bottom. I mean, that’s basically the same thing as fucking a girl right?” The grin he gives Lance makes the other boy laugh breathlessly. It’s a simplified statement, but Lance gets what he means, and it gives him a sense of relief. 

Keith seems pleased by Lance’s reaction. “And it doesn’t have to happen anytime soon. The point is, we’re taking the whole sex thing slow on purpose. You wanna keep going, we keep going. You tell me to stop, we stop. It’s that simple.”

Lance thinks he might cry. “Dude,” he mumbles, lips twitching and his heart swelling with affection. “That’s kind of gay.”

Keith rolls his eyes and makes to move away, but Lance hooks his finger into his belt loops and pulls him back in, planting a chaste kiss on Keith’s mouth and lingering long enough for Keith to lightly reciprocate before he pulls away. “And what if I wanna get steamy like broccoli?”

“I think we have some green body paint left over from your Pickle Rick Halloween costume.”

“Shut the fuck up Keith.”

* * *

 

So… plot twist. It turned out that Lance actually didn’t have a problem with Keith kissing guys as long as it was Lance he was kissing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! You can find us on tumblr, @madness-and-brilliance and @the-noble-idiot, or on twitter as @loverboyklance and @shallweklance (respectively)!!
> 
> We have an idea for a continuation, but we wanna see if people liked this part first. So leave us a comment and let us know!  
> EDIT: There's now a part 2, from Keith's perspective and including never-before-seen scenes! Check out Dramatic Irony for more by clicking "next work"! Thank you all so much for your lovely support!


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